South Korea's military said on Friday that it suspects North Korea is preparing to send more troops to Russia to fight Ukrainian forces, even after suffering losses and seeing some of its soldiers captured.

According to preliminary estimates, the total number of casualties exceeded 3,000 soldiers, including 2,700 wounded. This follows an earlier statement by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Jan.

A thousand North Korean troops who have been fighting in the Kursk region of Russia have been killed in Vladimir Putin ’s war with Ukraine, officials have said. Western officials have told the BBC that 36 per cent of North Korean forces fighting in Russia had been killed, injured or captured by mid-January.